Not that you need my permission, but you have my permission to quit. Not your job of course, unless you are making a living wage from your writing. Oh, and don’t quit writing in general, or at least don’t quit writing unless you don’t want to be a writer any more. So what the heck are you quitting then you ask. Quit that project that isn’t working for you. Quit pouring effort into something that clearly isn’t going well and which you have no ideas for.
Maybe you won’t be quitting it forever, but pushing is generally not helpful for most people. Sometimes a story just hasn’t finished gestating in the back of your brain. Keeping it in your conscious mind isn’t giving your subconscious enough time to really dig in and work out the problems. This is writer’s block. Pushing harder and harder might get you through, but it won’t be the story it could have been. If you’re not a full time author on deadlines, then you can afford to set aside your current project and focus on something that does work for you. Maybe you’ll get back to it, maybe not. It might take ten years before you dust it off and have the perfect way to move forward. That’s okay.
I’ve been there. It took me a long time to realize that stubbornly pushing forward on a project that isn’t working is a waste of your time. Far too many years (yes, years) have been lost to writing that didn’t work. It was only after I set them aside to focus on other works that they finally began to come together properly in my mind. These days, I don’t suffer from writer’s block because I allow my subconscious time to help me out. I’ll say it again: You have my permission to quit. At least for a while anyway.
